Three Days of Summer
by Mark of the Asphodel
Summary: Occupation, pestilence, and perhaps a budding teenaged romance. A few days in the life of Princess Raquesis of Nordion. Takes place between Chapters Two and Three of FE4/Seisen no Keifu.


**Three Days of Summer**

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters.

* * *

**_Agusty, Agustria, in the third month of Sir Sigurd's occupation_**

**_One_**

"Well, you look out of mortal danger."

Raquesis wouldn't normally have taken such a tone with someone who really had been at death's threshold not a few hours before, but she didn't like the way the Silessian prince was staring at her. She thought she saw a definite _leer_ in his half-closed green eyes, and his general pose didn't help any as Lewyn sat up in the bed and the freshly-changed linens slipped away from his body. Naked from the waist, damp curls of hair tumbling down to his shoulders...

"You need to put a shirt on," she told him.

"Your servants took it away. I think they burned it," he said. His lilting accent seemed to make light of everything, especially if Lewyn was talking about himself.

"They should have given you another. If you catch a chill now, that's it for you." She tapped one of his bare shoulders with the end of her staff. "Don't think you're really out of the woods yet because you made it through the night."

Yet as Raquesis placed an ear to Lewyn's back to hear his breathing, everything sounded strong and clear. No wheezes, no crackles like dry leaves rustling together.

"Well," she said, as she pulled away and considered him. "You may yet be one of the lucky ones. I'll have a clean nightshirt sent up for you."

"Is everyone else okay?" Lewyn asked then, and in that moment there wasn't anything lightsome about his voice or the look in his eye.

"No one's died, but Sir Noish took ill this morning and there's no telling how that's going to play out."

"Only one sickened today? I hope that's the end of this pestilence."

"So do we all," she said.

Lewyn did indeed appear to know just how lucky he'd been, Raquesis thought as she instructed the attendants on how to deal with the wayward prince through the next few days of his recovery. Then again, he'd been in Agustria for several years now, long enough to become entirely too familiar with the terror known as the Verdanese Sweat.

It crept across the border in the last years of her father's reign; Nordion proved the sweat's first toehold in Agustria. Raquesis witnessed the first outbreak, as courtiers who'd seemed fine and healthy at breakfast took sick before noon and were dead by nightfall. The spotted plague festered in the slums every summer, and each winter _influenza_ came to carry off the infirm and the elderly, but the Verdanese Sweat struck the young, the robust, the well-fed and well-cared-for. That was reason enough for Raquesis to find it abhorrent, for she, her brother, and their friends were its apparent target. Then too, in the early years, it had killed before healers could make the faintest attempt at combating it.

First the victim might feel a strange sensation, a premonition of doom. Then they'd be seized by a sudden headache. Then bone-rattling chills set in, but only for a short time before the telltale symptoms of this new plague emerged: high fever and delirium, constant thirst, and above all a profuse outpouring of sweat. The course of this might take two hours, or twelve, or perhaps an entire day. Raquesis and her servants now knew how to handle the period of chills and fever, and she'd been able to keep her friends warm and dry and supplied with enough tea and broth to keep them alive, but in the first panicked outbreaks, no one had quite known what to do, and in almost every case the feverish sweat had subsided only in death.

And in the handful of cases where it didn't, where the fever truly broke and the sufferer survived that first terrible day, there'd been one final phase to the sweating sickness, the one that announced its presence in the most subtle of ways- a little crackling sound when one drew in a breath. Raquesis now hated that sound more than she hated the sound of steel upon steel. When one blade met another, someone stood a fair chance of walking away the victor.

But Raquesis could hold her head proudly today; the sweat might have come to Agusty and cut down several members of Sir Sigurd's party, but she'd put all the lessons learned in the past few terrible summers to work. Prince Lewyn looked certain to survive, and when she checked on Sir Midayle, she found him in an equally hopeful state. The main thing weighing Midayle down was the idea that his precious Lady Aideen might have been stricken by the sweat while he lay helpless, and Raquesis was able to assure the bow knight that his lady was well and untouched. Midayle went back to sleep with clear lungs and a clear conscience, and Raquesis went to her next patient.

She had to be careful with Prince Jamke; he didn't much like it when his native kingdom got the blame for the sweating sickness. But the servants had followed her instructions to make no mention of the _Verdanese_ Sweat around Jamke, and the main thing on the prince's mind was- surprise- the welfare of Lady Aideen. Raquesis would've been disgusted with the way Jamke and Midayle both seemed obsessed with the priestess from Jungby, but she did like them well enough as people and at least they weren't perverted about it. At any rate, she didn't wish either of them _dead_, and Raquesis was glad find Jamke on the path to a solid recovery when she listened to his breathing.

Sir Noish remained quite ill; Raquesis checked to make sure he was properly covered and being given enough to drink. Noish wasn't delirious and his fever didn't seem nearly as bad as what the others had suffered, so Raquesis felt his chances were better than most. Really, though, they'd all come through remarkably well, and Raquesis felt more than a little proud of her own efforts in combating the sweating sickness by the time she checked on the fifth of those in her care.

"Don't look so embarrassed, Finn. I've already seen you with your shirt off."

She couldn't accuse him of not covering up properly, at least. Raquesis had to coax the apprentice knight into lowering the coverlet so she could have a proper look at him; Finn seemed just a little awestruck by the idea that Nordion's princess was coming into his room and wanted his clothes off. The older men all seemed somewhat bemused by the way she'd charged into things and taken care of them, but Raquesis and Finn were almost of an age, and that did made things just a bit awkward as she slid off his shirt.

But, really, there wasn't the slightest thing interesting about Finn with his shirt off. He was slender as a reed and as pale as skimmed milk- white verging on blue. Jamke had given her the best show, if Raquesis were keeping score of such things, for the Verdanese prince had some impressive muscles beneath his dusky skin. Sir Noish wasn't half-bad either, but then again he'd always reminded her in a way of Eldigan...

"Breathe in," she said, with her ear pressed against Finn's back. "Good, now breathe out. And again."

She heard it again, though she hadn't wanted to. A little rustle, like one dry leaf upon another. If she took a lock of her own hair, held it up to her ear, and rubbed the strands together between her fingers, it would sound like that.

-x-

At supper, Sir Sigurd made sure to toast Raquesis for the skill she'd shown in keeping his man Sir Noish and the rest of their party alive. No one else had sickened since Noish that morning, and Sigurd claimed that Raquesis must have charmed the pestilence away, the same way that anyone at her side in battle seemed blessed with a mysterious luck as long as she was there. Raquesis smiled at the praise and took in the varied expressions of relief she saw around her. Some of her friends didn't seem to know how fortunate they were to be sitting at the table and not lying in a sickroom... but some of them seemed to know very, very well how lucky they were.

The little thief who'd gifted her with a rare sword earlier that year knew, for certain.

"Hey, Raquesis," Dew said after creeping up on her and appearing at her elbow. "Don't get sick yourself, okay?"

"I'm not planning on it, Dew."

"Nobody plans on it. But that's some nasty stuff and it doesn't care who you are."

"I know it, Dew."

"Yeah?" Dew was the one person in their party shorter than Raquesis- even Lady Ethlyn was a finger taller- and he looked up at her now with something that wasn't his usual impudence.

"Yeah. The sweating sickness took my father, Dew." He knew it, too, and didn't even blink at her words. "But a lot of the people who died back then were nobles, and if they didn't want to stay in bed, or they were too hot and wanted to rip off the covers and have a cold bath, or they wanted their favorite wine to drink when they were laid up, their servants were afraid to tell them no. That's why I'm doing what I'm doing, because nobody- not even Sir Sigurd or Prince Quan- is going to tell me no."

"Okay," Dew said then, but it was a long moment before he turned away from her.

Raquesis meant what she said, but she did feel a little bit of shame over having implied that her father had died out of some kind of misbehavior on his part. King Nordion took ill during the third outbreak of the sweating sickness, when they'd all begun to understand how to combat it, and it wasn't the fever that killed her father, nor any of his own actions. He'd died two days after the fever broke, drowned by a tide of fluid in his lungs that first announced itself as a harmless little crackle.

**_Two_**

Sir Noish survived the night and was fever-free and clear-eyed in the morning; Raquesis listened to the clear, healthy sound as Noish drew in a breath and felt a little selfish pride that the knight who resembled her brother Eldigan was likely to be all right. Her other illustrious patients- the two princes and Sir Midayle- were all well enough to be bored and impatient with bed rest, and since no one else had sickened since the previous morning, Raquesis only had one real problem to worry about.

"I brought you something special for breakfast," she said as she brandished a silver tray before her. "You wouldn't be helpful and tell me your favorite food, so I had to get the secret out of Lady Ethlyn."

She saw a faint blush color Finn's face as she revealed the dish of cold pudding- bread and milk, adorned with mint leaves and a dollop of pear jelly.

"I didn't need anything special," he said. His accent was as exotic to her ears as Lewyn's, but while Lewyn's lilt made everything into a jest, Finn made the most trivial things sound so _serious_.

"Well, it's here and we went through the trouble to make it for you, so you'd better eat it."

He did, but only after subjecting her to questions about the health and well-being of Prince Quan, Lady Ethlyn, Sir Sigurd, Sigurd's wife Lady Deirdre, Deirdre's unborn child, half-a-dozen other of their companions, and everyone's horses.

"It probably doesn't taste just like what you had back home," she said when he'd finished more than half of the pudding, "But we did try."

"No, it's good. Thank you."

He finished nearly all of it, and Raquesis suspected he'd left a little in the bowl because where Finn came from, only the ill-bred and peasants would show their hunger by eating the very last morsel on their plate. After all that, Raquesis felt a little reluctant to spoil things with an examination, but she couldn't very well abandon Finn for the day without properly checking on him. This time, he was perfectly obedient about unbuttoning his shirt and letting her listen.

He'd received a good washing-up since she'd last seen him, and Raquesis caught the scent of cedar and thyme as she drew close to Finn. It was pleasant, but she didn't let her distract her while she listened for that ominous crackle... which was there, but changed. This time, what she noticed lower down on Finn's back was that there wasn't much to hear at all when he drew in a breath. Any sound was muted, muffled, as though filtered through a thick layer of cotton or wool.

"You still seem a bit congested," she told him, and she could see he didn't have the slightest idea what that meant in the context of the Verdanese Sweat. "You'll need to rest until that's cleared up. If Quan says he needs you for anything, you have him talk to _me_, all right?"

He nodded, but she didn't have much faith in Finn really standing up to his lord if Quan wanted anything done. He'd deliver a letter to Anphony barefoot and in his night-clothes if that's what Quan asked of him.

-x-

"You shouldn't spend all this time on _me_, Lady Raquesis," he said, when she arrived alongside his supper.

"I've been spending as much time with the others," she lied, and for a moment she remembered thwacking a bowl of porridge down in front of Prince Lewyn and telling him he could like it or lump it.

For Finn's supper, she'd ordered up a little folded-over pie stuffed with minced steak and onion and tiny mushrooms. In Agustria, a pastry like that would hold only sweet fruit and custard, but in Finn's homeland they preferred savory pies, and the kitchen staff complied with the odd request even though the pastry chef made it clear to Raquesis that putting _meat_ in puff pastry was a disgrace to his art.

"Quan and Ethlyn asked to come see you after supper. I said they could; I think that if anyone more were going to get sick, they'd have done it already."

He smiled, and it was a quicker, brighter smile than the polite ones he'd given her earlier; a visit from the prince and princess must've been something he wanted all day. Quan and Ethlyn arrived even before Raquesis could call for the mostly-finished meat pie to be cleared away, and Raquesis sat off to the side while she watched the interaction between the trio from Leonster. They discussed the latest military news, or at least Quan tried to, while Ethlyn for her part tried to keep the conversation more lighthearted and personal. It seemed to Raquesis that Ethlyn's eyes narrowed every now and again as she watched Finn, as though she could tell something wasn't quite right.

Raquesis let an hour and more pass before she requested that the prince and princess cut it short and leave Finn alone for the night. Though Finn's eyes were shining with adoration for Quan and Ethlyn, his attention was flagging and clearly he needed to sleep. Quan took a moment to rumple his apprentice's azure hair before Raquesis propelled him out of the room.

"You're quite the lioness tonight," the prince laughed at her, and he made his exit. Ethlyn, though, hesitated in the hall, and her normally bright expression turned solemn.

"He seemed short of breath," said Ethlyn.

"Most people don't get over the sweating sickness in a day," replied Raquesis.

"Well, yes, but-"

"Many people don't get over it at all." Raquesis stared directly into the eyes of the princess, stared until she felt Ethlyn understood her completely. Only then did she soften her tone a little. "But I've never known anyone to make it past the third day and not recover fully."

"Which day is this, by your reckoning?"

"The close of the second," Raquesis said, for Finn had taken ill just before suppertime on Tuesday, nearly half a day after Lewyn's sudden headache gave them all notice that the Verdanese Sweat had come to Agusty.

"So tomorrow matters a great deal." Ethlyn began making little nervous gestures- adjusting her collar, straightening her skirt.

"I think so."

"I'll need to find some way to talk to Quan..."

"I wouldn't bother. There's nothing he can do about it, is there?" If Raquesis and her brother weren't as close to Ethlyn and Ethlyn's family as they were, the tone Raquesis had adopted with the elder princess would've been unforgivably rude. As it was, Raquesis knew she was pushing it. "It's a plague. Fifty people have died in Agusty alone this week. It would be outright miraculous for this palace to be completely unscathed."

And Ethlyn walked away with something less than her usual sparkle, and her head and shoulders a bit lower than she normally carried them.

-x-

When Raquesis was alone in her room for the night, she pulled out a letter from Eldigan, the most recent one she'd received from her brother. In one passage, Eldigan wrote of how Sir Alva, one of the Cross Knights who'd guarded her since childhood, had fallen prey to the sweat when it arrived in Agusty that summer. Alva and both his brothers had been stricken within hours of one another, and Eldigan feared that he'd lose them all to the plague.

"One in three is better odds than we first knew when this scourge arrived in our midst," Eldigan wrote. "As hard a blow as this is to weather, I can't call it devastating. Not anymore."

Raquesis folded up the letter and placed it back in its envelope.

"Every day outside the palace walls, they're carrying out the dead," she said aloud. "Why do we think we're all so special?"

**_Three_**

"Don't you like the pudding today?"

He was picking at it with about as much enthusiasm as Lewyn showed for the porridge that Raquesis had foisted on him for a second morning.

"It doesn't taste right," Finn mumbled. "I don't think it's anything to do with your cooks, so please don't scold them for it."

"I won't. You don't have to eat any more than you want to," she said, and placed her hand atop his. "Let's have you go outside today and get some fresh air."

"I'd like to go riding, maybe," he said, though from his tentative tone, Finn clearly expected the proposal to be shot down.

"Absolutely not," she replied. "But there's a spot in the gardens where we can set up a chair."

Going outside tired Finn enough that he turned out to be grateful for the chair. Raquesis had asked for it to be placed near the herb garden, where balm and lavender perfumed the air. She'd always wanted to brighten up the staid palace gardens of Agusty, and one of the happy by-products of Sir Sigurd's occupation was that Raquesis finally got her wish. She looked with pride across the clipped hedgerows now adorned by marigold and red salvia. Birds sang and bumblebees made their lazy way between the flowers; the air felt quite warm and a little steamy, and Raquesis could tell the tips of her hair were curling up from the humidity. Finn had pulled a down coverlet around himself, though, and he shivered in the light breeze even though Raquesis could see a trickle of perspiration coming down past his ear.

He wasn't much for talking that morning, so Raquesis filled the empty spaces by discussing all her own grand plans for Agusty, what she'd accomplished that summer in fixing the neglected grounds and what she hoped to do in the next few months before Sir Sigurd turned the palace over again to King Chagall.

"And the best part is, we can invite the people of Agusty in to enjoy all this beauty instead of walling them off. I've talked to Lady Deirdre about having the children from one of the orphanages come in for picnics- Finn, why are you getting up?"

"You've told me of all these wonderful things," Finn said as he untangled himself from the coverlet. He'd stood no taller than Lady Ethlyn when they first met, but over the last few months he'd shot up several fingers in height, and there was something of a half-grown colt in the way he moved now- awkward and a little endearing. "Can you show me? I'm afraid I haven't really been paying attention to all the effort you put into the gardens."

"Of course not. You've been too busy riding with Quan and subjugating anyone who's still loyal to that idiot Chagall." Still, it surprised and pleased her that Finn showed interest in her pet project, and Raquesis took him by the hand and led him around.

"If you need to stop for a moment, please tell me," she did say to him as they went through the boxwood labyrinth.

"I think I feel better."

On the other side of the labyrinth was the feature in which Raquesis felt the most pride- a restoration of the derelict rose garden, which hadn't seen so much as a good pruning since King Chagall's mother died eight years before. Now it was vibrant, with glossy foliage and blossoms in every color the gardeners of Agustria could supply to her. At its center, climbing roses twined together to form a great arching bower, with pink and white and crimson petals scattered on the grass below.

"It's..." Finn had his head tipped back to gaze up into the canopy of blossoms, but he stumbled, and Raquesis had to grab his arm to keep Finn from pitching over face-first onto the lawn.

"Hey!" she cried as she tried to support him, and her skirts crunched around her as they both sank down onto the grass.

"What's happening to me?" His eyes had gone wide, and Raquesis stared directly into them as she answered his question.

"You're still not anywhere close to well, and it's up to Lady Aideen's Lord above whether you'll be here by sundown." As she spoke, Raquesis had the errant thought that Finn had surprisingly long eyelashes for a boy. She hadn't noticed before what a nice effect they made with his blue eyes. "And since I can't do anything about it and neither can you, I though you might like being out here better than staying indoors another day."

"Oh," he said, and the long dark lashes lowered for a moment. But he didn't protest; like Lady Ethlyn the night before, Finn seemed to get her meaning perfectly. "I didn't... I wish that you'd..."

"You can just sit here with me for a while," she said, once it was clear Finn wasn't going to finish any of those incomplete sentences. "If you ever get back home, you can tell all your friends you got to recline in the arms of a lovely princess."

Raquesis knew better than to jest with a man- _any _man- like that, because such jests led to people showing up with armed men ready to carry her off for marriage whether she wanted it or not. But Finn seemed so harmless... _helpless_, really... that it loosened her tongue.

"I don't have that many friends back home," he said, as his head settled against her shoulder. "On Tuesday night I did I think might be dying, so I was reflecting on everything I've done so far, and if I didn't ever see home again I don't think that many would even miss me."

"Is that so?" The conversation, Raquesis decided, had gotten very weird. She hadn't expected him to say anything like that, as he never said much about himself.

"Coming here with Lord Quan and meeting everyone, and winning the battles we've won... I think this has been the nicest part of my life."

"So it's all been worthwhile?"

"I don't know about that," he said, and Raquesis watched the sweep of those dark lashes again as they lowered. "I think I'm the kind of person who wants to finish something once it's been..."

"Then finish that sentence," she prompted him, after several moments of silence on Finn's part. He didn't respond. "Finish _what_, Finn? You're all to go home in a few months anyway, that's what the terms of the occupation say."

After another long silence, he said, "I think I want to sleep... but if I sleep now I don't know if I'll wake up."

"Yeah, I don't know either."

Raquesis didn't feel any more like a capable healer, or a warrior princess, or the _de facto_ mistress of Agusty palace. She felt like a silly girl who'd lured a very ill boy out to the most isolated part of the palace grounds and now didn't know what to do with him. And that's exactly what she was, Raquesis decided, as Finn drifted to sleep with his head resting against the taffeta billows of her skirt.

It seemed to her that hours passed. At least she wasn't being scorched by the sun, Raquesis thought, as rose petals drifted down around them. But she was thirsty now, and her legs were getting cramped, and she wondered what would happen if she just scooted out from under Finn and went to get someone to carry him in. Maybe someone was looking for them, though... they'd been gone for a while. A long while. She could count the minutes by the petals fallen over them; they'd collected in the folds of her skirt and on Finn's shirt, and one deep-red petal landed on his cheek. It looked less pretty than the thought might have sounded, and Raquesis brushed it away.

"Raquesis? Hey, Raquesis, are you out there?"

"Sir Sigurd?"

The tall, trim figure of the heir to Chalphy had arrived to her rescue, the way he so often did.

"Hey, Raquesis! Ethlyn said you'd gone this way-" His open face registered surprise at the sight beneath the rose bower. "Oh... maybe I should leave you alone."

He'd gotten the wrong idea about everything, Raquesis thought. It was almost comical. So was the sight of Sigurd in his fine coat and cravat... with a dainty basket in one hand.

"You ordered this from the kitchen this morning, but come dinnertime no one could find you," he said. "Do you still want it?"

"Yes! Thanks, Sigurd." She'd forgotten about the picnic lunch she'd requested that morning. "And tell Lady Ethlyn I'm not ready to come in yet."

Raquesis tore into the basket of cheese, sweet buns, and spring water the instant Sigurd turned his back; it'd be wrong to say she was _famished_, but she really did feel better after eating and drinking something, and she decided she wasn't lying about not being ready to come in. She saved some of the lunch for Finn, though, in case he wanted any. She still didn't know if he'd ever want anything again, or if this picture-book scene in the rose garden was going to be the end of his story. She'd thought staging something in the garden a clever and nice thing to do for him- gallant, really, if a princess was allowed to be gallant toward a mere knight, and not even one of her own knights- but now it all felt so absurd that Raquesis wondered if she were wrong. She really wasn't sure what to do other than brazen it out and pretend to everyone that she'd absolutely intended things to go this way... whichever way they went.

And what was she doing, anyway? Raquesis knew she wouldn't sit with Prince Lewyn's head in her lap, or Prince Jamke's, or even with Sir Noish... though Noish was handsome enough that she'd at least entertained the thought of it. She wouldn't even sit like this with Dew, because as young as he was she couldn't trust those nimble fingers of his not to go places they shouldn't if she gave him the chance. But it had seemed safe to act this way with Finn... and yet Sir Midayle was as "safe" as they came and she wouldn't offer her lap up to him.

As she mulled this over, Raquesis realized that Finn wasn't resting quietly any more. He started to frown, to toss his head and shift about, and finally to cough. After a time, she couldn't take watching it.

"Easy, Finn. Come on and sit up." She snapped back into the role of the healer-princess, supporting Finn while he tried to catch his breath.

"Lady Raquesis?" How like him to be up on his etiquette even when she had both arms around him.

"You're starting to fight it off. That's good."

"Is it?"

"Yes. Usually people just drown, as surely as though they were underwater, without even a struggle. You're struggling, so I don't think you're going to drown." Raquesis felt certain enough on that count now. "The sun's going down soon and you're still here. Do you want to watch it together?"

"Why not?" Despite the ragged sound to his voice she thought his quaint accent really was charming.

"How do you feel?" she asked, as the sky to the west turned the colors of the rose petals blowing around them.

"Terrible," he said, and the unguarded honesty of it made her laugh.

"I don't think you've ever been as straightforward with me as you've been today, Finn."

"After all this, I think I owe you that much," he said.

Yes, Raquesis thought, she liked him. Or at least she liked those dark lashes and that accent and the perpetual sense of surprise when Finn realized that anyone cared that he was happy or sad or anything other than _functional_. Maybe she'd noticed before and just discounted the things she liked about Finn because he wasn't Eldigan and didn't have Eldigan's height and strength, or his confidence, or his dark eyes and golden hair. Maybe she hadn't realized that she liked Finn until she stopped taking his presence for granted about two days ago.

"I don't want Lord Quan putting you to work any time soon. If the weather's fair again tomorrow, we can spend another day in the garden like this... if no one else needs me, that is," she amended, as she saw an objection forming in his eyes.

"I think I'd like that."

"And maybe in a few days we can go riding together."

"Yes..." Those long lashes lowered for a moment and then he said, "We could do more than ride."

"Come again?" She felt her body stiffen beneath the taffeta puffs of her dress.

"I know you've been asking Lord Quan if he could teach you how to fight with a lance. I'll never be as skilled as he is, but maybe I know enough to teach someone else... at least the basics."

"Oh, is that all you meant? Yes. Yes, let's do exactly that." She'd been annoyed at Quan earlier for implying that _he_ was simply too busy to train her, but he could leave her training in Finn's hands. Now Raquesis decided she could get over it. "And when you go home, you can tell all your friends about the summer you spent with the most beautiful princess in Agustria..."

"I really only have one friend there, and I don't know that he'd believe the part about the princess unless he saw you."

"Don't go saying such things. I might take it as an invitation." She really was going to land herself in trouble, running her mouth like that.

The breeze picked up, shaking yet more blossoms down from the bower, and for a moment Raquesis had a _feeling_, a note of warning in her soul that things weren't going to turn out the way any of them thought. The strange sensation lingered, and as Raquesis watched the bright disk of the sun slip toward the horizon, she noticed another and more troublesome feeling.

Her head ached. Quite a lot. For no apparent reason. More, the balmy summer eve had turned suddenly cold, as though a north wind had come upon them without warning. Dew's words of caution echoed in her mind: _Don't get sick yourself, okay_?

Raquesis forced a smile and entwined her fingers with Finn's as the sun descended. If this were going to be the last sunset of her life, she intended to make the most of it.

**The End**

* * *

A/N: The pestilence shown in this isn't made-up, but is modeled on a peculiar plague that hit Tudor England numerous times and took out more than a few notable people- though Queen Anne Boleyn seems to have been lucky enough to survive it. Some researchers believe the disease was what we now know as hantavirus.


End file.
